Wednesday, July 04, 2007

The Importance of Dislike

Discovering things you dislike, can often lead to a better understanding of yourself. Americans tend to tolerate a lot of mediocrity, and I think it is important to give logical reasons for not liking things. Too many TV shoes today are simply not quality, and recognizing things like that for yourself is great. Most people usually pass things off as just "ok" or actually find themselves liking things that are terrible. I usually tend to force my dislikes on others, but coming up with your own is the best way. For me, part of it is bashing the things that everyone else likes, just to feel a sense of seperation from the general public, but it is also good to enjoy things that everyone else does. For instance, when Napoleon Dynamite came out, everyone touted it as this hilarious, great movie. Of course I was skeptical, and by the time I saw it, it had already made it's way to the freshman P.A. kids who yelled "gimme your tots" through the hallways at school. After watching it though, I really had to agree with everyone else that it was a hilarious movie. Part of it connected a little deeper with me too, since the film took place in my home state of Idaho. Some things are genuinely good, and you have to listen to others. I recently watched The Godfather trilogy for the first time, and concluded like everyone else that these were great movies.

Realizing things that are bad is much more important however. Sometimes there can be a lot of pressure to enjoy certain things, when the unique person you are might not have any reason to do so. The other day I was talking about wine and how I couldn't really figure it out. I felt like somehow, somewhere, someone created a law that said you must like wine. I forced myself to drink it and tried to convince myself that I liked it. One day my brother goes, "you know you don't have to like wine." Immediately I responded, "yeah....who ever said you had to like wine?" Since then I haven't tried to drink it and it's been great. On job applications and when meeting new people, rather than asking for interests or hobbies, they should ask for dislikes. You can put down anything for hobbies and people will believe you. Everyone always puts, "I like going to the lake, the outdoors, and music." Who doesn't like these things? If instead you said, "I hate chocolate ice cream, the Simpsons, and abortion," you've said much more about yourself. You should find things you hate and stick to them, unless someone has the skills to convince you otherwise.

1 comment:

Lincoln Davis said...

This post brought me much joy.